Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader (8 page)

•
In 1970 he was driving along when his car suddenly caught fire. He managed to stop and get out just before the fuel tank exploded and engulfed the car in flames.

•
In 1973 a faulty fuel pump sprayed gas all over the engine of another of Selak’s cars while he was driving it, blowing flames through the air vents. His only injury: he lost most of his hair. His friends started calling him “Lucky.”

•
In 1995 he was hit by a city bus in Zagreb but received only minor injuries.

•
In 1996 he was driving on a mountain road when he turned a corner and saw a truck coming straight at him. He drove the car through a guardrail, jumped out, landed in a tree—and watched his car explode 300 feet below.

Melon
is from the Greek word for apple.

BAD NEWS (AND GOOD NEWS) TRAVELS FAST

By this time he was starting to get an international reputation for his amazing knack for survival. “You could look at it two ways,” Selak said. “I am either the world’s unluckiest man or the luckiest. I prefer to believe the latter.”

How does the story of Frane Selak end? Luckily, of course. In June 2003, at the age of 74, Selak bought his first lottery ticket in 40 years...and won more than $1 million. “I am going to enjoy my life now,” he said. “I feel like I have been reborn. I know God was watching over me all these years.” He told reporters that he planned to buy a house, a car, and a speedboat, and to marry his girlfriend. (He’d been married four times before and reflected, “My marriages were disasters, too.”)

Update:
In 2004 Selak was hired to star in an Australian TV commercial for Doritos. At first he accepted the job, but then changed his mind and refused to fly to Sydney for the filming. Reason: He said he didn’t want to test his luck.

BACKWARD TOWN NAMES

The names of dozens of U.S. cities come from other words spelled backward. Most were forced to do it after realizing that the town name they wanted was already taken. Others have quirkier origins.

•
Enola, South Carolina.
Originally named “Alone,” but residents began to feel too isolated.

•
Nikep, Maryland.
Changed because it kept getting Pekin, Indiana’s, mail by mistake.

•
Adaven, Nevada.
America’s only city with its state’s name spelled backward. It’s a palindrome!

•
Tensed, Idaho.
Named for a missionary named DeSmet, the name was reversed when it was discovered there was already a DeSmet, Idaho. The town submitted their new name, Temsed, to Washington, D.C., but a clerical error resulted in the misspelling.

The
Klingon Dictionary
has sold over 250,000 copies to date.

We at the BRI have an insatiable appetite for finding misinformation, including these food myths
.

M
yth:
French fries aren’t really French—they’re Belgian.

Truth:
Fried, salted potato strips
did
originally come from Belgium (they were introduced to America by soldiers returning home from World War I). But French fries are also French. How so? The term refers to the way they’re cut—long, thin strips are called julienne, or French style.

Myth:
Belgian waffles are Belgian.

Truth:
They’re American. Some enterprising food vendor in the Belgian Village pavilion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair added yeast to normal waffle batter so they’d be fluffier. To make his new creation sound more exotic, he called them “Belgian” waffles.

Myth:
The Chinese invented pasta.

Truth:
Legend has it that Marco Polo discovered noodles during his travels to China and brought his discovery back to Italy. But actually, the Italians already had noodles. They’d been making them for centuries. The difference: Chinese noodles are made from rice or buckwheat. Italian pasta uses semolina flour, a type of wheat.

Myth:
Twinkies will stay fresh forever.

Truth:
True, Twinkies have a longer shelf life than most other baked goods. But that’s because they contain no dairy products, not because they’re full of preservatives. How long do they really stay fresh? According to Hostess, a mere 25 days.

Myth:
Sugar makes kids hyper.

Truth:
For years scientists have conducted studies, trying to link sweets with hyperactivity...without success. A 1995 double-blind American Medical Association test concluded that there is absolutely no chemical link between sugar and behavior problems. There may be a psychological link, however: parents who expect sugar to affect their child tend to imagine the kid is misbehaving.

All spiders are cannibals.

Do you think an animal cares that its owner is a celebrity? Probably not...but we do
.

MADONNA
has a Chihuahua named Chiquita.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY
had Springer Spaniels named Black Dog and Negrita (and 30 cats).

LEONARDO DICAPRIO
has a Poodle named Rufus and a lizard named Blizzard.

MARTHA STEWART
has cats named Beethoven, Mozart, Vivaldi, Verdi, Teeny, and Weeny.

PINK
has a Jack Russell terrier named F**ker.

VIRGINIA WOOLF
had a marmoset named Mitz.

ADOLF HITLER
had a German Shepherd named Blondi.

JESSICA SIMPSON
has a pot-bellied pig named Brutus.

MICHAEL JACKSON
has a llama named Louie.

CALVIN COOLIDGE
had raccoons named Rebecca and Horace.

MUHAMMAD ALI
has a tabby cat named Icarus.

CAMERON DIAZ
has a cat named Little Man.

GEORGE CLOONEY
has a pot-bellied pig named Max.

SIGMUND FREUD
had a Chow named Jo-fi.

DREW BARRYMORE
has a Lab/Chow mix named Flossie.

TRUMAN CAPOTE
had a Bulldog named Bunky.

SYLVESTER STALLONE
has a Boxer named Gangster.

BRITNEY SPEARS
has a Yorkshire Terrier named Baby.

SLASH
has a Golden Retriever named Belle.

GEORGE ORWELL
had a dog named Marx and a goat named Muriel.

CHRISTINA AGUILERA
has a dog named Jackson (for her idol, Michael Jackson).

CHARLES DARWIN
had a dog named Bob.

Pet tip: If your dog has bad breath, he may need to have his teeth cleaned. (Or maybe he’s just a dog.)

Have you heard of one James McIntyre? His unusual verses set the world afire. Think of this while eating your Cheerios: In the 1800s he was the bard of southwestern Ontario. His work is published this day still, If you read his poems, they’ll make you ill
.

A
BARD IS BORN

James McIntyre (1827–1906), known to his admirers as the “Chaucer of Cheese,” was born in the Scottish village of Forres. He moved to Canada when he was 14 and lived most of his life in Ingersoll, a small town in Ontario, where he worked as a furniture and coffin maker. But what earned him his reputation was his hobby—writing poetry. McIntyre wrote poems on a variety of topics: He described Ontario towns, saluted his favorite authors, and sang the praises of farming and country life. He even composed tributes to his furniture.

WHAT RHYMES WITH GOUDA?

Most famously, he wrote poems to promote the local economy. And in the mid-1800s, the economy of southwestern Ontario was cheese. In 1866, for example, Ontario dairy farmers produced what was then the world’s largest block of cheese—it measured more than 21 feet across and weighed 7,300 pounds. The giant inspired two of McIntyre’s best-known poems: “Ode on the Mammoth Cheese” and “Prophesy of a Ten Ton Cheese.”

When the
Toronto Globe
printed some of his work, including such poems as “Oxford Cheese Ode,” “Hints to Cheesemakers,” “Dairy Ode,” and “Father Ranney, the Cheese Pioneer,” his fame spread across Canada and then around the world. What makes McIntyre’s poetry fun to read isn’t just his choice of subject matter (cheese) or his weird rhymes (pairing “fodder” with “Cheddar,” or “shoes Norwegian” with “narrow toboggan”).

“If you read his poetry, what comes out is his enthusiasm,” says Michael Hennessy, mayor of Ingersoll. “People might say they are terrible poems, but McIntyre was a trier, and that is a great quality in a writer.”

More fun to say it than read it: Uranus is green.

WHO IS THE WORST?

Giving new meaning to the term
cheesy
, many of McIntyre’s admirers argue that he, not Scotland’s William McGonagall (see
page 145
), deserves the title of World’s Worst Poet. But McGonagall’s fans steadfastly disagree. “McGonagall is by far the worst poet in the English language,” says Scottish poet Don Paterson. “He could write a bad poem about anything. This cheese guy may be a bad poet, but it seems he could write bad poetry about only one subject.”

A MCINTYRE SAMPLER

A few excerpts from our favorite McIntyre poems:

“Hints to Cheesemakers”

All those who quality do prize Must study color, taste and size, And keep their dishes clean and sweet, And all things round their factories neat, For dairymen insist that these Are all important points in cheese.

Grant has here a famous work Devoted to the cure of pork, For dairymen find it doth pay To fatten pigs upon the whey, For there is money raising grease As well as in the making cheese.

“Dairy Ode”

Our muse it doth refuse to sing Of cheese made early in the spring. When cows give milk from spring fodder You cannot make a good cheddar.

The quality is often vile Of cheese that is made in April, Therefore we think for that reason You should make cheese later in the season.

Cheese making you should delay Until about the first of May. Then cows do feed on grassy field And rich milk they abundant yield.

Jack Kerouac wrote his first novel at 11.

Utensils must be clean and sweet So cheese with first class can compete, And daily polish up milk pans, Take pains with vats and with milk cans.

And it is important matter To allow no stagnant water, But water from pure well or stream The cow must drink to give pure cream.

Though ’gainst spring cheese some do mutter, Yet spring milk also makes bad butter, Then there doth arise the query How to utilize it in the dairy.